Television nightmares, Puritan witches, masked killers and five final reasons to keep the lights off
The alphabet ends, the numbers take over and our 31-night Halloween challenge reaches its bloody conclusion.
By Rory Jackson
We have survived aliens, witches, zombies, vampires, sharks, killer clowns, cursed videotapes and several families that should never be invited to dinner.
Now things get weird.
The final stretch of Horror-Fix’s ABCs and 123s of Halloween takes us from V through Z before handing the last five nights to the numbers. That gives us ten movies, ten increasingly questionable decisions and one final opportunity to complete the challenge without retreating to the safety of another Halloween marathon.
There is body horror ahead. There are Puritan nightmares, home invaders, furious roommates, apartment cults and a group of Catholic schoolgirls asked to fight a demon because every responsible adult apparently had other plans.
October is almost over.
Let’s finish it properly.
V is for Videodrome 
Long live the new flesh.
David Cronenberg’s Videodrome begins with a sleazy television executive searching for programming that will shock an audience. He discovers a mysterious broadcast consisting of torture, murder and little else. Naturally, instead of turning it off and calling the police, he decides it may be exactly what his station needs.
Things deteriorate from there.
James Woods plays Max Renn as a man who believes he understands exploitation because he sells it for a living. Then Videodrome begins erasing the boundary between the images he watches and the body watching them. Television screens breathe. Flesh opens like machinery. A videotape slides into a human torso, and somehow that is not the strangest thing Cronenberg asks us to accept.
The practical effects remain wonderfully disgusting, but Videodrome has endured because the ideas underneath them have only become more relevant. The movie imagined entertainment consuming its audience long before social media placed a glowing screen in every hand. Max believes he is controlling the signal. The signal has other plans.
The technology may look dated. The warning does not.
Horror-Fix alternatives: The Void • The Vanishing • Vampyr • Vacancy • Veronica • V/H/S
W is for The Witch
A family leaves the protection of its community, builds a farm beside a dark forest and immediately begins blaming one another when everything goes to hell.
In fairness, the goat is not helping.
Robert Eggers’ The Witch is not interested in giving its audience an easy series of jolts. It builds its terror from isolation, religious paranoia and the growing certainty that something beyond the tree line is paying attention.
Anya Taylor-Joy is extraordinary as Thomasin, the eldest daughter of a Puritan family collapsing under the weight of fear and accusation. Every failed crop, unanswered prayer and suspicious glance pushes her closer to becoming the explanation for disasters she did not create.
Eggers treats the family’s beliefs seriously. To these people, the Devil is not a metaphor. He is real, active and perfectly willing to weaponize their guilt against them. That conviction gives the movie its power. The forest is frightening because they believe it is. Eventually, we begin believing it too.
Some viewers will find the dialogue difficult and the pace demanding. Those viewers are welcome to live deliciously somewhere else.
For everyone willing to surrender to it, The Witch is a beautifully constructed nightmare about repression, faith and the terrible freedom waiting outside the walls of respectable society.
Also, Black Phillip is a very handsome boy.
Horror-Fix alternatives: The Wicker Man • The Wolf Man • The Woman in Black • What We Do in the Shadows • When Evil Lurks • Watcher
X is for X
There are not many horror movies beginning with X, which means Ti West could have delivered almost anything and claimed the slot by default.
Fortunately, X earns it.
A group of young filmmakers travels to rural Texas in 1979 to make an adult movie on an isolated farm. Their elderly hosts are not thrilled when they discover what is happening in the barn. They become considerably less thrilled when jealousy, resentment and suppressed desire turn the property into a killing ground.
West understands the machinery of a slasher. He knows when to delay violence, when to let the audience spot danger before the characters and when to make a death so excessive that laughter becomes the only reasonable response.
Mia Goth plays both aspiring actress Maxine and the elderly Pearl, transforming what could have been a technical gimmick into the heart of the movie. Both women are terrified that life will pass them by. One believes her future is beginning. The other knows hers is almost over.
That shared desperation gives X more sadness than its blood-soaked setup requires. It is still a movie about attractive people making pornography before being murdered with farm equipment. It simply refuses to let that be the only thing on its mind.
Horror-Fix alternatives: Xtro • X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes • The X Files: Fight the Future • XX • X-Ray • X Game
Y is for You’re Next
Home invaders pick the wrong family all the time in horror movies.
In You’re Next, they pick the wrong dinner guest.
Erin accompanies her boyfriend to a wealthy family reunion held inside an isolated country house. The gathering is already collapsing under years of resentment when masked attackers begin firing crossbow bolts through the windows.
That should place Erin among the victims.
Instead, the killers discover that the quiet Australian woman at the table grew up in a survivalist compound and has been preparing for this kind of evening most of her life.
Sharni Vinson turns Erin into one of modern horror’s most satisfying final girls. She does not suddenly become capable because the plot needs her to survive. She recognizes the danger, studies the house and starts making decisions while everyone else is still screaming.
Director Adam Wingard balances vicious violence with black comedy, allowing the family’s petty arguments to continue even while people are bleeding to death around them. The result is a home-invasion movie that understands how quickly terror becomes entertaining when the prey starts setting traps.
The animal masks are creepy. The soundtrack is infectious. The blender has rarely been used more effectively.
Horror-Fix alternatives: The Yellow Sea • YellowBrickRoad • Yummy • You Won’t Be Alone • You Should Have Left • Yakuza Apocalypse
Z is for Zombieland
By the time Zombieland arrived, zombie movies had already taught us how civilization would end.
Nobody had explained how to enjoy it.
Jesse Eisenberg plays Columbus, an anxious survivor whose elaborate collection of rules has kept him alive after a zombie outbreak destroys the United States. Woody Harrelson is Tallahassee, a walking act of violence motivated by rage, grief and the increasingly desperate search for a Twinkie.
They join forces with Wichita and Little Rock, two sisters who have survived by trusting each other and conning everyone else. Together, the four form the kind of damaged substitute family that only appears after the traditional version has been eaten.
Zombieland works because it never allows the comedy to erase the loneliness underneath it. These characters joke, argue and murder zombies with gardening equipment because stopping long enough to grieve would probably destroy them.
The kills are creative, the rules are useful and the celebrity cameo remains one of the best surprises in horror-comedy history—even if almost everyone now knows it is coming.
There are scarier zombie movies and nastier zombie movies. Few are this much fun to revisit.
Remember to check the back seat.
Horror-Fix alternatives: Zombie • Zombie Strippers • Zombi 3 • Zombeavers • Zoombies • The Zombie Diaries
1 is for 1BR
Finding an affordable apartment is already terrifying.
1BR simply removes the metaphor.
Sarah moves into a seemingly perfect Los Angeles apartment complex filled with friendly neighbors, community gatherings and a suspicious number of rules. The residents appear unusually invested in one another’s lives. That initially feels comforting. It stops feeling comforting around the time Sarah realizes the community has no intention of letting her leave.
Director David Marmor turns apartment living into a nightmare of surveillance, forced intimacy and weaponized politeness. The complex does not need ghosts or monsters. It has something worse: neighbors who genuinely believe they know what is best for you.
Nicole Brydon Bloom keeps Sarah sympathetic without making her helpless. Her character wants connection, which makes her vulnerable to people offering a manufactured version of it. The movie understands that cults rarely introduce themselves with robes and sacrificial knives. They begin with kindness, structure and the promise that you will never be alone again.
In 1BR, that promise becomes a threat.
Horror-Fix alternatives: 1408 • 13 Ghosts • 1922 • 10 Cloverfield Lane • 13 Cameras • 12 Hour Shift
2 is for 2LDK
Two aspiring actresses share an apartment while competing for the same role.
That is the entire setup.
It is more than enough.
Yukihiko Tsutsumi’s 2LDK takes professional jealousy, personal resentment and the tiny irritations of living with another human being, then locks them inside an apartment until attempted murder begins to feel inevitable.
Nozomi and Lana initially maintain the brittle politeness of roommates who have been silently collecting grievances. One eats the other’s food. One leaves hair in the bathroom. One may be sleeping with someone who could help her career. Every annoyance becomes evidence in a private trial neither woman knows is happening.
Then the politeness breaks.
What follows is an escalating battle fought with household appliances, cleaning products, electricity and anything else within reach. The violence becomes outrageous, but the emotions remain recognizable. Anyone who has ever shared a home with someone they could not stand will understand how quickly a missing yogurt can become an act of war.
At roughly 70 minutes, 2LDK does not waste time pretending this relationship can be saved.
Some roommates need mediation.
These two need protective equipment.
Horror-Fix alternatives: 28 Days Later • 28 Weeks Later • 2001 Maniacs • 247°F • 2-Headed Shark Attack • 23:59
3 is for 3 from Hell
The Firefly family should be dead.
That has never stopped them before.
Rob Zombie’s 3 from Hell brings Otis, Baby and Captain Spaulding back after the hail of bullets that ended The Devil’s Rejects. Sid Haig’s declining health limited his role, leading Richard Brake’s Foxy to join the surviving killers for another eruption of murder, profanity and grimy outlaw mythology.
Let’s be honest: 3 from Hell does not reach the filthy power of The Devil’s Rejects. That movie ended with something close to finality, sending its monsters into gunfire while “Free Bird” did the emotional work no dialogue could have managed.
Resurrection inevitably weakens that ending.
However, Zombie still knows how to make these characters feel dangerous, disgusting and strangely charismatic. Bill Moseley attacks every Otis monologue like he has been waiting years to spit it at someone. Sheri Moon Zombie allows Baby to become even more unpredictable, dancing between childish amusement and sudden brutality.
The movie eventually turns into a sunbaked siege south of the border, complete with masks, guns and enough sweat to make the screen feel sticky.
It is unnecessary, excessive and mean.
In other words, it is a Rob Zombie movie.
Horror-Fix alternatives: 30 Days of Night • 31 • 3 Extremes • 3D Saamri • 3:15 A.M. • 3-Headed Shark Attack
4 is for 4bia
Horror anthologies are ideal for October because commitment is limited.
If one story does not work, another nightmare will arrive shortly.
The Thai anthology 4bia, also released as Phobia, collects four stories built around loneliness, curses, bullies and the unfortunate consequences of sitting beside the wrong person on an airplane.
The opening segment follows an isolated woman exchanging text messages with a mysterious stranger. It turns the glow of a cellphone into the only light inside an increasingly oppressive room. Another story delivers violent supernatural revenge against a group of students. A camping trip becomes a darkly comic ghost story, while the final segment traps a flight attendant aboard a plane with a corpse that refuses to behave like luggage.
As with most anthologies, the individual chapters are not equally strong. That is part of the format. What matters is the variety and the willingness to switch tones without losing the underlying unease.
4bia can be cruel, funny and genuinely frightening—sometimes within the same story. It also offers proof that you do not need a massive budget when you have a dark room, a dead body and a telephone delivering messages nobody should answer.
Horror-Fix alternatives: 47 Meters Down • 4BIA 2 • 4×4 • 4/20 Massacre • 4D Man • 40 Days and Nights
5 is for 5ive Girls
A troubled teenager arrives at a Catholic boarding school where the student population has been reduced to five girls.
That is not a school.
That is a demonic tasting menu.
Warren P. Sonoda’s 5ive Girls follows Alex, a student with supernatural abilities who quickly discovers that the academy is hiding a history of possession, disappearance and religious experimentation. The remaining girls have abilities of their own, which becomes useful when a demon begins working its way through the school.
The movie has exorcisms, psychic powers, sinister authority figures and Ron Perlman as a priest. That sentence alone should tell you whether this belongs on your Halloween schedule.
5ive Girls is not polished prestige horror. Its budget is visible, its mythology becomes crowded and some of the dialogue arrives with all the subtlety of a ruler across the knuckles. It survives because it commits to its premise. The school feels abandoned, the religious imagery is appropriately severe and the young cast treats the material seriously enough to keep the supernatural battle moving.
There are better possession films.
There are more expensive supernatural thrillers.
There are very few movies called 5ive Girls, and tonight that counts for something.
Horror-Fix alternatives: Five Nights at Freddy’s • 5 Dolls for an August Moon • 5ive Must Die • 5150 Elm’s Way • 5-Headed Shark Attack • 5 Souls
The Last Word
That is it.
Twenty-six letters. Five numbers. Thirty-one featured movies. Hundreds of possible alternatives. One complete month of horror.
Maybe you followed every selection. Maybe you replaced half of them. Maybe life got in the way and you spent October watching three movies while promising yourself you would catch up tomorrow.
It still counts.
The ABCs and 123s of Halloween was never supposed to be homework. It was an excuse to revisit old favorites, discover something strange and keep horror playing until the last jack-o’-lantern collapsed into orange mush.
If you completed all 31 nights, congratulations. You have earned the right to be insufferable about it until next October.
If you missed a few, there is always the most sacred tradition in horror:
The sequel.
